Dessert Pizza

Know what's a good idea?

Dessert Pizzas are a good idea. Especially if you have kids.
Maybe not such a good idea if you're concerned about your weight...
just go on a long walk (with kids!) afterwords, this is worth it.



Mostly because of just how easy this is to throw together.
We (the nieces, friend of niece, and I) made pizzas for lunch yesterday and of course we had to have afternoon snacks (although usually our snacks aren't quite so... sugary) and we did have one left-over pizza base..

Ingredients:
*Pizza base (or make your own dough, it's not hard! But for convenience sake, I used store-bought bases)
*Cream cheese for our base
*Chocolate (can be chips, we used a bar broke up into squares)
*Fresh fruit (or frozen; we had fresh raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. I LOVE SUMMER BERRY SEASON!!!!)
*Smarties
(or anything else really! go nuts experimenting, this is just what we had around)

Slide that baby into an oven (160 C) for fifteen minutes or so, then let it sit on the counter for another ten-fifteen minutes (DO NOT EAT RIGHT AWAY! Not only will it give the berries a chance to not be molten, but if you let it sit your chocolate will melt and go all ooey and gooey a bit more and that's a VERY GOOD THING)



Enjoy the sugar rush!

Surprise Muffins!

The cooking part of my lovely Sunday mostly involved this: baking muffins!
But these aren't your average chocolate chips!



These babies have a jersey caramel in the middle!

I'm lucky enough to have two nieces who are at least some-what interested in cooking. They weren't into the prepping and measuring, but they were more then happy to mix up the ingredients and divvy the mixture up into the muffin tins, and of course hiding the jersey caramel in the middle!



Chocolate- Caramel Surprise! Muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
100g dark chocolate, grated (I only had about 50g to grate, so I threw in a handful of dark chocolate chips)
2/3 cup milk (I used vanilla flavoured soy milk)
125g butter, melted
1 egg, lightly beaten
6 jersey caramels, halved

To make!

1. Preheat oven to moderate (180 degrees, C). Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin pan.
2. Sift flour into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and chocolate.
3. In a jug, whisk together butter, milk and egg. Make a little well in the centre of flour mixture and at wet mixture in all at once. Mix lightly until just combined- don't over-mix!!
4. Spoon enough mixture into each recesss of muffin pan to half fill. Place half a jersey caramel in the centre of each one. Cover evenly with remaining muffin mixture so the caramels are now in the centre of the muffins!
5. Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

STUFF YO' FACE!



These are definitely worth enjoying while they are still warm so the surprise inside is still melty and gooey; but don't eat them right away, especially if you are enjoying them with children as that caramel inside can get quite molten right out of the oven.

Easy, Easy Custard Slice

This is, hands down. The most satisfying treat for the lack of effort that goes into making these. Seriously? They throw together in minutes. They are also soooooo good!



Easy Vanilla Slice with Passionfruit Icing

Slice:
250g packet of morning coffee biscuits (I used Arnott's Nice biscuits)
300ml of thickened cream
1 cup milk (I used one cup of vanilla flavoured soy milk)
85g packet of vanilla instant pudding
Icing:
1 cup icing sugar
2 passionfruit
1 teaspoon soft butter

1. Cover the base of a slab pan with biscuits, plain side down.

2. Combine cream and milk in large bowl, add pudding mix and beat with rotary beater for about a minute or until mixture is smooth.

3. Pour pudding mixture over the biscuit base, then top with another layer of biscuits, plain side down.

4. Combine sifted icing sugar, passionfruit pulp and butter in a small heatproof bowl. Stir over hot water until icing is spreadable. (or, just do this bit in the microwave like I did..)

5. Spread icing over the top layer of biscuits.

6. Place in the fridge overnight to set.



STUFF YOUR FACE!

Oh man, these are so good.. I've made them a couple of times now just because of how easy they are to do; both with and without the icing. I think next time I tackle them with the icing I'll double the amount because I'm indulgent like that!
These got a huge thumbs up from family young and old last Family Dinner Night.

Chewy Chocolate Caramel Cups!

You asked! Here's the recipe for these bite sized deliciousness!

Ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
90g butter, chopped
1/4 cup caster sugar
400g can sweetened condensed milk
30g butter, extra
2 tablespoons golden syrup
100g dark chocolate, melted.

TO MAKE!:
First start off with the base.
Preheat the oven to moderate (180-200 degrees C). Grease two 12-hole mini-muffin pans. (or cupcake size if you want bigger ones, but I recommend mini size!)

In a processor, combine flour, butter and sugar until ingredients just come together, it'll look a bit like breadcrumbs. Press roughly a tablespoons worth of the mixture into each hole in the muffin pans being sure to stamp in firmly to create the cups. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until browned lightly.

Meanwhile in a saucepan, combine the condensed milk, extra butter and syrup over medium/low heat; stirring until smooth. Be sure not to heat it to the boiling point!

Pour the hot caramel filling into the hot biscuit bases; return to the oven for about three minutes or until caramel begins to brown around the edges.
My tried and true cooking method involves having the radio on loud; so this point is roughly the length of one good song on the radio, have a REALLY good dance and then take a peek into the oven to see how things are going.
Pull them out of the oven if they look good and let them stand for two minutes; (another song!) afterward take a knife and gently remove the tarts from the pan, putting them someplace to cool completely. By now they should be looking like this!



Resist the urge to gobble them up right away! Trust me on this!

After they're cool, melt the chocolate using your favourite method (either the bowl-over-boiling-pot-'o-water method, or in the microwave which is my personal fave) and then spread across the top of the cooled tarts. Stand until the chocolate has set (I tossed them into the fridge for an hour or so)



You can see here I experimented with both the mini-size and larger normal-cupcake size tins; they are VERY rich so I recommend going with the smaller, bite-sized versions.



Oh my..



Oh goodness!!



YUMM!!!!